(Image source from: Visaguide.World)
An Indian American man in New Jersey was arrested for allegedly submitting 11 H-1B visa applications and fraudulently procuring his own citizenship, said attorney Craig Carpentino.
The 43-year-old Neeraj Sharma, living in the Piscataway township, is charged with one count of naturalization fraud and one count of visa fraud, the attorney said. He will be produced before Magistrate Judge Michael Hammer in Newark federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, Sharma recruited foreign workers with purported IT (Information Technology) expertise who sought work in the United States.
The visa and naturalization fraud charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of USD 250,000.
He is the owner and chief executive officer of Magnavision LLC, an information technology staffing and consulting company based in Somerset, New Jersey.
When submitting the potential staffers' H-1B visa paperwork to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Sharma falsely represented that the foreign workers had full-time positions awaiting them at a national bank, a pre-requisite to securing their visas, federal prosecutors alleged.
According to the complaint, in fact, Sharma had never secured work for the applicants and submitted fake letters to the USCIS on the bank's letterhead with forged signatures of bank executives. It further said that he carried out these illegal activities as an Indian citizen and as legal permanent resident.
The H-1B visa allows an individual to enter the U.S. to temporarily work at an employer in a specialty occupation. The H-1B visa program applies to employers seeking to hire nonimmigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations otherwise supermodel of distinguished merit and ability.
The H-1B visa holders largely comprise Indians. According to the USCIS, there were as many as 419,637 foreign nationals working in the U.S. on H-1B visas as on October 5, 2018.
-Sowmya Sangam
